Kathleen Stock and Julie Bindel’s longtail exclusionary victimhood
When Kathleen Stock resigned from her post at the University of Sussex rather than keeping her head down or choosing to write for progressive publications, she decided to embrace her victimhood and write for a sundry of right wing media outlets. Most of us have not heard of Spiked! or Unheard, online platforms for disgruntled writers who believe they have been cancelled by progressives. Stock found her stock trade on Unheard, using it to troll trans activists and anyone who believes gender is an essential part of the human condition. Julie Bindel has done the same; while stating that she is fighting for women’s rights, as far back as 2003 she was writing for the Telegraphy, colloquially known in the UK as the Torygraph for its close links to the British Conservative party.
What makes this less remarkable is that there is almost an industrial pipeline of middle-aged white middle class female journalists and academics who have trundled into the laps of the right-wing media having previously espoused feminist positions. Hadley Freedman, Suzanne Moore, J K Rowling, Maya Forestater, the list would take up the rest of this article. What is not shocking is that this is not a new or recent phenomenon, it stretches back to the dawn of second wave feminism and the alienation of certain feminists because their cherished sex based binary notions of the world were challenged by feminists who saw gender as the key to stopping patriarchy.
Bindel in particular has crusaded against sex work as part of her writing, without compromise and without taking onboard the point that sex work can be work and can be consensual. When The Guardian stopped accepting her articles she ended up writing for the right-wing press who lapped up her world to show that they were on the side of women. Bindel is clearly blind to the other anti-feminist articles in the same media she writes, for all she cares about is being right, not about being adaptive and open to change.
The same goes for Kathleen Stock. At one point I had a degree of empathy for her, the hang dog look she gives out in interviews and documentaries clearly indicates she was not enjoying being put under the spotlight. While I am sure it is editorial discretion, she hardly smiles or seems content with the world. No sympathy, just empathy for someone who is clearly having a hard time. Yet, as I read her Unheard articles this empathy evaporated. Here was someone using their victimhood to excoriate activists pushing for equity, someone doubling, trebling, quadrupling down on the one moment in time that brought her fame and celebrity. Without her resignation Stock would simply be a philosophy professor at a middling British university with a book deal, and we all know how those work out. By resigning Stock clings onto a scintilla power, a modicum of respectability in the right wing, and in using it to beat down trans folk she shows her real self.
I hate bullies. I cannot stand punching down, be it in politics, comedy, or in academia. Both Bindel and Stock come from humble origins, proudly thump their chests for lesbian pride, and state that they are being oppressed by trans activists. Yes, some trans activists have taken it too far in their actions, but that does not mean that all trans folk are worthy of their opprobrium. When you have a public platform, when you are given five minutes of fame, you have the opportunity to raise people up alongside you. Instead, both Bindel and Stock have clung to the very thing that turned media outlets like The Guardian against them, becoming the very bullies they claim trans folk are.
Stock claims that she is seeking reason for sex-based spaces, while Bindel claims to be championing women’s rights. Neither see that by pandering to the right wing will only result in themselves and others like them being burnt up in the bonfire of all women’s rights, and that by becoming the bullies they alienate those feminists who would have otherwise worked alongside them. By championing exclusionary feminist they reject trans women, sex workers, indeed any woman who does not fit their definition of womanhood. Just listen to any Matt Walsh podcast to understand exactly what the far right thinks of any feminism. To them feminism is cancer, and that viewpoint is entrenched in the right-wing press. Bindel, Stock, Rowling, Forestater et al have rushed into their waiting arms, a bear hug that will never let go and slowly crush whatever good intentions were originally there.
It is important to highlight the original good intentions because both Stock and Bindel came from a place of activism that twenty years ago was necessary. For Bindel her rejection of trans women was there right from the start, she was never trans inclusionary. Bindel has written that she was inspired by Janice Raymond, and as such has carried that torch into her writing career. At no point was she ever a trans ally. Stock is more complicated, but is pretty much the same. While she claims to be a champion for women, her insistence that sex is the root of womanhood, that biology is the categorical imperative over any personal gender identity always put her at odds with any feminist who rooted gendered identity as the source of oppression.
All women who weaponise their perceived victimhood by embracing the right and using the right-wing media are playing with fire. The central reason they do it is grasp onto that power for as long as they can, to scrap what ever earnings they can make while their victimhood is still fresh, and to perpetuate the cycle of newly claimed victims of their so-called trans industrial complex. Bindel was the first major disciple at the feet of Janice Raymond, a lonely voice for many years, but now she has a scorned sorority that sits in the bosom of the right-wing, all claiming victimhood while learning no lessons as to why they got there.
